Without Ever Firing A Shot
by BatmansBabe
Summary: A post DMC fic. Beckett gets another mark from Captain Jack Sparrow. JE


Disclaimer: If I could own the sweet, proliferous bouquet that is Jack Sparrow, everything would be right in the world. For me. As it is, I own less of Jack Sparrow than Davy Jones does. Meaning, less than none. I don't own any of this. I barely own the plot.

AN: This has been rolling around in my head for two days. In the past 48 hours I've read about 30 right after DMC ends fics, and I have to say, while they've all got their own flare…it's like reading Pride and Prejudice told from every era known to humanity. A learning experience…but the same predictable damn story. Every. Single. Time. I'm sure I'll hang for this when my faithful (love them!) readers realize that I AM alive and breathing and writing…but I had to put it out there. Hope you like.

Without Ever Firing A Shot 

Beckett turned the key in the lock, set aside the box, and turned toward the open doors that led out onto the docks. The diaphanous curtains blew softly into the night air just outside, and he took a moment to savor the smell of the salt coming off the sea. He owned the sea now.

He paused at the doors, unable to wipe the smirk off his face. The sea was his. Davy Jones was his, locked forever inside the Holy Grail of the East India Trading Company. A small, unimposing wooden box, inside it the world. Beckett could honestly say that he now had control of the Seven Seas.

He puffed out his chest, performing to himself, imagining all the riches, all the fame, and the power, and the glory…he'd have everything.

Further down the docks, he could see a woman slowly making her way inland, her footsteps echoing softly off the wooden planks. She looked to be alone, but even as she passed men along the port walks, they made no move to stop her.

"_Odd,_" Beckett muttered to himself. Usually they'd at least leer at her. Say something suggestive that would make any honorable woman's toes curl. If they did say anything, the silhouette moving in the shadows, hair blowing softly around her, her dress billowing around her, was unaffected. No one to be trifled with, of course, but neither was she one to be afraid of. His gaze moved beyond her, out toward the grand ship the King had offered him. A ship of the Fleet. Faster than the _Interceptor_, nearly the size of the _Dauntless_…and pure, unsullied, unlike the _Black Pearl_ in every way. Faster than it, he liked to imagine.

Not that it mattered now. The _Pearl_ had sunken to the depths of the ocean, it's captain with it.

_Captain_ Jack Sparrow. He was dead now. According to Jones, devoured by the Kraken even as the ship had been taken.

It didn't much matter though. Jack Sparrow, as he'd said, had been a dying breed. Pirates had no standing anymore. Not now that Beckett controlled every spot of water from here to the ends of the earth.

Time to turn in, he decided a moment later, feeling pleased with himself, counting in his head the gold pieces, as he put each one into a weight.

Something moved out of the shadows just as he was about to turn, and he vaguely recognized the shadow of the woman from the docks before a sword was pressed to his throat, and light from a candle inside splashed into her face.

"Elizabeth Swann," he said, wondering how in the blazes she'd made it here. Hadn't Davy Jones been led to believe she had been on the ship with Sparrow?

"Cutler Beckett."

"_Lord_ Beckett."

"I'm all out of pleasantries, Beckett. I'm here for letters of Marque, and I won't leave without them."

She was certainly very forceful. And held a sword quite well, he noticed. Fortunately, there were still guards just outside the office doors, ones that were constantly stationed there. Port Royal's pride.

"Miss Elizabeth. Regrettably, the letters of Marque I promised you were already claimed. And as I remember, your…fiancé never did bring back what I'd asked him to."

"I can wait for new ones."

"Ms. Swann, just outside these doors are two of the finest soldiers of the Royal Navy. Just a word to the wise that I can call on them at any moment, and—."

Cold metal pressed against his head from the other side, and a gun cocked. "I can't be letting you do that, mate." The voice was rolling, slow and slightly inebriated as always and…alive.

Jack Sparrow's boots crossed swiftly one over the other, until he was standing before Beckett. His face was tanned, eyes glowing, and he spared a moment to look at his partner in amusement. She was still holding her sword aloft, he recognized. Jack kept his finger on the trigger, nodding his head toward Beckett, and Swann swiftly pushed her sword back into it's scabbard, her hands moving to Beckett's waist. After a moment, she returned to standing, smiling at Sparrow as she held aloft a key. "Now tell us where the chest is, Becksie, and we'll get our papers and leave quietly." His eyes scanned Elizabeth's form. "Well. Mostly quietly."

"You don't expect a pardon after this, do you? Every man loyal to England will be at your back."

Elizabeth moved into the room, the key in her hand, her eyes moving swiftly from trinket to trinket. He expected she'd search the extravagant things first. "Unfortunately for them, Mr. Beckett, they'll never be able to catch up."

"And why is that?" he asked even as, in his head, he was practically parroting Sparrow, muttering _Lord _Beckett._ Lord._

She smiled, moving behind his desk, eyes taking purchase of everything in the room. "Because they'll be chasing Captain Jack Sparrow."

The smirk on Sparrow's face made his mustache twitch. "Search the simple things first. If the East India Trading Company knows anything, it's that the extravagant things are most likely to be stolen." He eyed Beckett. "And it'll probably be small, too." Cutler tired to imagine he wasn't implying something, there.

A moment later she held up the small chest he'd just finished locking, and Beckett gave an audible gulp. This made ol' Jack smile.

"That's the one, love."

The key made quick work, and soon the lock was tumbling open.

When he became aware of rustling cloth, he made to turn his head, but found that Jack's pistol held his head still like a puppet's string.

"Are you going to kill me, Jack Sparrow?"

"Now that, _Lord_ Beckett, is entirely up to the lady," the pirate told him. "You and I will never be square. But if your death _pleases_ Ms. Swann, then I daresay your death is what she will get." The lips twitched upwards again. "And the world turns."

Beckett wondered for a moment what he meant, but as he watched, Elizabeth returned, spinning the globe on Beckett's side table as she came.

"What say you, Lizzy?" Sparrow asked, not bothering to keep his eyes on Beckett. "What shall we do with Mr. Beckett?"

She turned on her heel, making her way toward the fireplace. He heard embers in the fire shifting, and then Swann's voice. "Look familiar?"

"Do you take your orders from a woman now, _Captain?_" Beckett asked, flinching as Sparrow's grimy fingers twisted into the lapel of his jacket, and he watched in horrified fascination as he was propelled backward, almost perfectly into his desk chair. Now where had that come from?

"Aye, not only a woman, Becksie." He cringed at the nickname, then watched the look Jack shot Elizabeth. "The best pirate in the Spanish Main."

"Just the Spanish Main?" Swann asked, sounding affronted.

"Oh come Lizzy, you can't be the best in places you've never been."

"I've been to World's End and back, with a ship full of pirates."

"Aye. And back then, _you _were the bonnie lass."

"If you'll remember, it was you who needed rescuing, not me."

"I only needed rescuing because you seduced me and chained me to my ship and left me to die."

"And do you remember what you called me?"

Beckett heard something sizzle in the fireplace.

Sparrow smiled fondly. "Pirate," he told her, his voice affectionate.

She reappeared by his side, holding in her hand something that made Beckett's stomach flip over. "Mm," she said in reply, holding the still orange branding instrument aloft. "Pirate."

She knelt beside him, her fingers making quick work of the buttons at his wrist, and in the blink of an eye, the jacket and the shirt below it had been pushed aside, showing pale skin, and a short, jagged scar cutting over his forearm. A souvenir from his early days as an agent, from Jack Sparrow in his early days as a pirate. "What will your father say when he hears this, Ms. Swann?" he asked, panic rising within him. "What will you tell him when he finds out his daughter has turned into a…"

"Scallywag? Scurge? Pirate?" Sparrow listed off. "And who would believe you, anyway, hmm? Elizabeth Swann and Jack Sparrow returned from the dead to tag you a pirate and steal the contents of a measly little wooden box? No. You see, you set yourself up. In taking the grandest of things and putting it in the simplest of things, you simply made our grand adventure much too simple for anyone who has heard of not only your grandess but also our grand deaths. And in simplifying not only us but your own, simple self, you simply made it all too easy to take this grand thing from you and simply…disappear. Savvy?"

While Beckett tried to wrap his mind around what Sparrow had just said, Swann merely rolled her eyes. "Would you like the honors?" she asked the captain after a moment.

He took the length of steel, spinning it in his hand like it was a twig to play with. He gave Beckett a serious look. "Now I'll have to ask you not to scream. Wouldn't want to have to kill your two guards." _They were probably asleep,_ Cutler though. No other reason for them not to hear Swann and Sparrow. The doors were thin for a reason.

Beckett closed his eyes, his breath uneven, his chest heaving, his stomach rolling in fear. His eyes clenched shut as he felt the searing hot pain on his arm, and it stayed there, burning his skin, and he felt like if he had to smell that stench of burning skin a moment longer he'd pass out, but he didn't. The metal stayed there for only a few seconds longer and then it was gone.

Iron clanged against the brick fireplace, and he opened his eyes to find Swann watching Sparrow from the door as he pulled a few of the more valuable trinkets from a table by the door. "Jack," she said softly, and he barely looked up at the intimate way it was said.

"Hmm?"

"We should go. The crew only gave us a few hours."

He smiled, at last setting a gold pocket watch into his jacket, moving sinuously toward the door. "They wouldn't leave without the captain and first mate. No one could run the ship. They'd be completely, utterly lost without us."

"Without you, you mean."

Without bothering to look back at Beckett, the two moved out onto the deck, standing intimately close. "Well, they'd need you anyway. A captain always needs a first mate."

"And you need me?"

"Oh, I need you. I need you fiercely, darling."

Instead of acknowledging what he'd said, she veered off into another topic. "That was far too easy," she told him.

"We make a good team, you and I. I and you." Sparrow threw an arm around Swann's waist. "Now, I seem to remember you being very interested in the sacking of Nassau Port without the firing of a shot."

"Do you?" She smiled. "Well, you do have a good memory."

"Now that I do. And do you know what else I remember?"

"What else do you remember?"

"That you, my love, never got your wedding night."

The voices began to fade into the distance, but Beckett could tell they were taking their dear sweet time. Mocking him. Making him into a farce.

"And how do you intend to remedy that, Captain Sparrow?"

"Well, by performing a marriage."

"A marriage?"

"Part of one, actually."

"And which part should I expect to be having?"

"That would be the part where—."

His voice was too low to hear the rest, but Swann laughed, her arm coming up to tap Jack lightly on the shoulder, mock angry.

Beckett watched them until the mists hid them from view; knowing that even if he ever did see them again, there was no way he'd ever catch them. The heart was gone. His power, his fame, his riches…they'd all been taken in a heartbeat. He cringed at the irony of that. In a heartbeat. Taken by pirates who had already been claimed by the sea.

He half wondered if he'd dreamed it. Or if maybe they were ghosts.

Ghosts. That they certainly were.

When he awoke in the morning, his arm burned, and there were whispers of a pirate ship that had tied up at the dock for only a few hours. A pirate ship with black sails, crewed by men who'd seen the damned, captained by a man who had cheated death a thousands times over, his first mate a woman as untamed and deadly as the sea. The whispers quickly turned to rumors, and by the end of the day, everyone from Governor Swann to the reinstated Commodore Norrington had come to his doorstep to find out the truth.

James Norrington was the one who figured it out, though. "It was Sparrow, wasn't it? He came for the heart."

Beckett had continued to put pressure on his arm, the wool of his shirt occasionally catching on the bandage every now and again. Stop the pain with more pain seemed to be the only answer, at the moment. "He wasn't alone."

Norrington smiled slightly, his eyes wandering over the map mounted to the wall.. "How did she look? Happy?"

"Like a pirate."

James smiled again, turning to the side table. He spun the globe, and Cutler cringed, trying his hardest not to imagine Sparrow's confusingly eloquent slur. "Free." He nodded. "She was happy." He eyed Beckett. "Did it look like she was being treated alright?"

"Sparrow took his orders from _her_, Commodore."

From the look James Norrington gave him, it was obvious he hadn't expected any less. Unbeknownst to him, though, (or much of anyone else, for that matter) as the Black Pearl sailed away from Port Royal, Elizabeth was being treated much better than alright. Sans the wedding, she was being _treated_ to her wedding night.


End file.
